Kid's lock box

Way back when my daughter was a toddler, she was fascinated with opening and closing things. Before kindergarten was going to start we decided to try out Montessori school and see how she’d like it. Turns out she loved it and many of the activities they did in the JK timeframe were geared to improve manual dexterity and hand eye coordination.

After seeing a few of the tools they used in Montessori teaching, my wife and I came up with the idea of a lock box to teach our daughter how to manipulate all kinds of locks, keys and fasteners.

The box is roughly 16” x 4” x 4” in size. Shopping for this one was great fun, go around as many hardware stores as I can and pick up all different types of locks, latches, hasps, etc.

I ended up with 10 different types of fasteners.

The box itself is just some scrap pine I had lying around. The inside is unfinished, the box stained with a cherry stain, the doors with a walnut stain and the entire thing given a couple of coats of varnish.

There is also a handle on top for easy carrying.

One thing we found fun with this was to hide the keys to the locks behind doors that don’t lock.

In the end I don’t know if she learned a lot from the experience, but she sure had a heck of a lot of fun playing with it. Every kid who picks it up has a ball locking and unlocking it.

Cool…....a really unique way to help improve a kids dexterity…...while having fun doing it…......plus ….....later on a place to ‘lockup’ all those neat little treasures that the young’uns manage to accumulate!!Super job!!!

-- Doug, New Mexico.......the only stupid question is one that is never asked!........don't fix it, if it ain't broke!